Artificial sweeteners prime the human body to selectively choose high-calorie foods. By disrupting the fine balance of appetite and metabolic hormones, they distort the body’s ability to monitor how many calories we consume. These are six unparalleled poisons still approved by governments despite considerable evidence of their harm.

1. Aspartame

Aspartame is by far the most common and still most widely debated artificial sweetener due to extensive studies which have verified its toxic nature in mammals. It is frequently used in diet soda products, yogurt, chewable vitamins, desserts, popsicles, candy, chewing gum as well as many other foods.

It is also marketed as Nutrasweet, Spoonful, Canderel and Equal (sometimes shown as the E number E951).

Per U.S. News & World Report, it is approximately 200 times sweeter than sugar. The FDA itself calls aspartame “one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved.”

Yet the FDA listed almost 100 adverse symptoms from aspartame. The last time the Food & Drug Administration published their list of aspartame reactions was in 1997, the reports where submitted voluntarily by victims in America, the results can be read in the 14 page document from the FDA. Over ten thousand complaints were tabulated which reported 92 different vile consequences from consuming the chemical, including death. Since that year the FDA has not updated their aspartame report, and now denies it ever existed!

Aspartame via ingestion into the digestive tract, is made into some ten other poisonings by the digestive processes, and then excepting that which is delivered directly to the pancreas, they are transported straight to the liver via the portal vein, where they then are very partially dealt with, and partially reprocessed.

Aspartame in gum is absorbed by the buccal mucosa of the mouth, gums, and the tongue. According to research, because aspartame is absorbed this way, it makes aspartame a far worse poisoning than if given or injected intravenously. The aspartame goes directly into the brain by passing the spinal cord and the blood-brain barrier when it is absorbed in the mouth. The smallest amount of aspartame (like what is contained in a piece of gum) is very dangerous and damaging to the health of the body.

2. Sucralose

Also known by the commercial name Splenda, sucralose is 600 times as sweet as sugar by gram. In an official report on the substance, the FDA said:

In determining the safety of sucralose, the FDA reviewed data from more than 110 studies in humans and animals. Many of the studies were designed to identify possible toxic effects, including carcinogenic, reproductive, and neurological effects. No such effects were found, and FDA’s approval is based on the finding that sucralose is safe for human consumption.

Splenda/sucralose is simply chlorinated sugar; a chlorocarbon. Common chlorocarbons include carbon tetrachloride, trichlorethelene and methylene chloride, all deadly. Chlorine is nature’s Doberman attack dog, a highly excitable, ferocious atomic element employed as a biocide in bleach, disinfectants, insecticide, WWI poison gas and hydrochloric acid. When turned into Splenda it becomes a chlorocarbon, in the family of Chlorodane, Lindane and DDT.

Unlike sodium chloride, chlorocarbons are never nutritionally compatible with our metabolic processes and are wholly incompatible with normal human metabolic functioning. When chlorine is chemically reacted into carbon-structured organic compounds to make chlorocarbons, the carbon and chlorine atoms bind to each other by mutually sharing electrons in their outer shells. This arrangement adversely affects human metabolism because our mitochondrial and cellular enzyme systems are designed to completely utilize organic molecules containing carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and other compatible nutritional elements.

By this process chlorocarbons such as sucralose deliver chlorine directly into our cells through normal metabolization. This makes them effective insecticides and preservatives. Preservatives must kill anything alive to prevent bacterial decomposition.

A significant portion of all scientific studies designed to establish “safety” for our food and medicine are paid for by the very industries they serve. PepsiCo dropped aspartame from Diet Pepsi in the U.S. in response to customer feedback and replaced it with sucralose

Just like aspartame, which achieved marketplace approval by the Food and Drug Administration when animal studies clearly demonstrated its toxicity, sucralose also failed in clinical trials with animals. Aspartame created brain tumors in rats. Sucralose has been found to shrink thymus glands (the biological seat of immunity) and produce liver inflammation in rats and mice.

3. Neotame

Neotame is officially marketed as an inexpensive artificial sweetener made by NutraSweet, which is a former division of Monsanto and original manufacturer of aspartame. Neotame was approved by the FDA for general use in July 2002, and has now been approved by the EU. It is also is approved for use in Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

It is up to 13,000 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar). The product is very attractive to food manufacturers, as its use greatly lowers the cost of production compared to using sugar or high fructose corn syrup (due to the lower quantities needed to achieve the same sweetening).

Neotame is aspartame plus 3-di-methylbutyl, which can be found on the EPA’s list of most hazardous chemicals. The aspartame formula is comprised of Phenylalanine [50%], which caused seizures in lab animals and Aspartic Acid [40%], which caused “holes in the brains” of lab animals — bonded by Methyl Alcohol, or Methanol [10%] which is capable of causing blindness, liver damage and death.

Methanol, or wood alcohol in aspartame breaks down further in heat and in the body, into Formaldehyde (embalming fluid), Formic Acid (venom in ant stings) and the most deadly of all — Diketopiperazine (DKP), a brain tumor agent.

When it comes to human health, neotame is in the same dangerous category as aspartame, but it is a deadlier neurotoxin, immunotoxin and excitotoxin. The long-term effects are essentially cell-death.

The FDA loosened all labeling requirements for Neotame as part of a large-scale effort to make it a near-ubiquitous artificial sweetener, to be found on the tabletop, in all prepared foods, even in organics. It simply does not have to be included in the ingredient list.

4. Acelsulfame Potassium

Acesulfame Potassium, Ace-K or Acelsulfame-K, is marketed under the trade names Sunett and Sweet One. The substance is 200 times sweeter than table sugar and has been on the U.S. market since 1988. Some studies concluded that there was “was no evidence of carcinogenic activity” in Ace-K. Further testing has been recommended by the Department of Health, as the substance has undergone less study than other approved artificial sweeteners.

There are several potential problems correlated with consumption of Acelsulfame Potassium. Even though there are many studies that attest its safety, acesulfame potassium is still suspected of causing benign thyroid tumors. In rats, the development of such tumors took only 3 months, a period in which the concentration of this additive in the consumed food was between 1 and 5 percent. This is a very short period of time, so the substance is believed to have significant carcinogenic properties.

Ace-K is a potassium salt containing methylene chloride, a known carcinogen. Long term exposure to methylene chloride can cause nausea, headaches, mood problems, impairment of the liver and kidneys, problems with eyesight and cancer. It stimulates insulin secretion in a dose dependent fashion thereby possibly aggravating reactive hypoglycemia (“low blood sugar attacks”).

In animal studies, it produced lung tumors, breast tumors, rare types of tumors of other organs (such as the thymus gland), several forms of leukemia and chronic respiratory disease in several rodent studies, even when less than maximum doses were given. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, it was petitioned on August 29, l988 for a stay of approval by the FDA because of “significant doubt” about its safety.

5. High Fructose Corn Syrup

High-fructose corn syrup, which is a mixture a potent concentrated cocktail of the simple sugars fructose and glucose, came into use in the 1970s and by 2010 the average American was consuming about 80 pounds of it per year. Overall, dietary intake of fructose has increased by an estimated 50 percent in the last thirty years.

Once public awareness campaigns regarding High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) toxicity went viral, the Corn Refiners Association petitioned the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asking it to allow the term ‘corn sugar’ as an alternative label declaration for high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

Increased consumption of HFCS also results in depletion of chromium in the body, which is important is helping glucose pass from the bloodstream into the cells.

According to two recent U.S. studies, almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient.

Consumers in Europe and Canada should also be aware that HFCS is often listed under different names under the auspices of regulatory bodies which define food labeling exemptions. For example, HFCS can be legally labeled as glucose/fructose and high fructose maize syrup in Canada. Although the EU restricts the amount that can be manufactured, it does allow the term isoglucose to be substituted for HFCS in food labels.

6. Saccharin

In 1878 saccharin was discovered at Johns Hopkins University by a chemist named Constantin Fahlberg. It is a substance approximately 300 times sweeter than sugar. In Canada, the equal of saccharine is called “cyclamate” and it was discovered by a graduate student at Illinois University. In fact, cyclamate is 30 to 50 times sweeter than sugar. Although saccharine is banned in Canada, cyclamate is used in 50 different countries including Canada.

Susan Swithers, an associate professor of psychological sciences at Purdue, said rats given saccharin-sweetened drinks ate more because they experienced an inconsistent relationship between sweet taste and calories. Consuming artificially sweetened products with saccharin interferes with one of the automatic processes our bodies use to regulate calorie intake.

In the early 1970s, saccharin was thought to be a carcinogen when it was linked to bladder cancer. This link was based on studies done on rats. The National Cancer Institute notes that human trials have found no such link and that the mechanism that caused bladder cancer in rats does not exist in humans. Still, the Center for Science in the Public Interest believes that saccharin is unsafe and has issued the sweetener its lowest rating of “avoid.” In a 1997 press release, the CSPI acknowledged that saccharin has not been proven to cause cancer in humans, but the CSPI contends that studies that have been done on saccharin indicate that it may still present a risk.

Saccharin was moved to the list of potential human carcinogens in 1980, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. However, a petition from the Calorie Control Council prompted the EPA to reassess the safety of saccharin. Based on evaluations that the National Toxicology Program conducted the EPA decided that saccharin was safe and removed it from the hazardous substances list. This led to a December 2000 repeal of the warning label that was previously required for saccharin products.

The Top 5 Natural Sweeteners

Fortunately, there are natural sweeteners that are healthy and tasty alternatives to refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and artificial sweeteners. According to a study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, substituting healthy sweeteners — including maple syrup and honey — can increase the antioxidant intake. The top 5 natural sweeteners are:

Raw Honey (1 tablespoon – 64 calories)

Stevia (0 calories)

Dates (1 Medjool Date – 66 calories)

Coconut Sugar (1 tablespoon – 45 calories)

Maple Syrup (1 tablespoon – 52 calories)

Notice agave syrup is not on the above list of natural sweeteners. It is heavily promoted as a low glycemic sweetener, enticing diabetics. But it is neither a natural food nor organic. Fully chemically processed sap from the agave plant is known as hydrolyzed high fructose inulin syrup. It needs to be hydrolyzed so that the complex fructosans are “broken down” into fructose units or it won’t be sweet! According to Dr. Ingrid Kohlstadt, a fellow of the American College of Nutrition and an associate faculty member at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health stated “[Agave is] almost all fructose, highly processed sugar with great marketing.”